For me, Memorial Day is one of those holidays that is hard to find ideas to craft. However, this year seems to be a bit of an exception. I decided to think about ways to celebrate and a few things came to mind. I hope you and your children have some fun using these ideas.

My first thought was inspired by a girl, standing in a parking lot, playing with an “old-fashioned” toy. She was having a great time using a pinwheel! These are very easy to make and fun to decorate. All you need is a square piece of paper, about the weight of construction paper. Let your child decorate the paper, for Memorial Day, or any day. It doesn’t matter if you decorate one or both sides of the paper. Once decorated, simply fold or draw lines from corner to corner, so there is an “X” that marks the center of the square. Take your scissors and cut the lines you just made until you are about an inch, or a little more for bigger squares, from the center. Fold one corner from each side toward the middle. Secure it with a straight pin that you can put into an eraser topped pencil, or you could use a very small nail into a small wooden dowel. From here, all you need to do is add a breeze and have some fun.

Many communities have parades and it would be great to have a noisemaker to accompany the bands and other activities in the parade. It is easy to make one using a paper plate. Decorate one side of the plate. Fold it in half, fill it with rice, dried beans, or those leftover beads that you don’t seem to be able to use in a project and staple the plate shut. Don’t have a paper plate, but do have stryofoam ones? Simply use markers or other items to decorate those and staple two of them together.

For the girls, it could be fun to decorate headbands or shoes. You could do something as simple as wrap red, white and blue ribbon around a fabric headband to finding ways to add flags or stars to the headband. I’ve seen ones where the embellishments are mounted on the headband. Keeping with the ribbon theme, why not take narrow ribbon, braid it and lace it through your tennis shoes? Add some patriotic beads and you’ve really brightened up those shoes.

Let me know how your crafts turned out by visiting the forum. I’d love to hear, and if possible, see some of the things you’ve done.